Oh Canada

Was home in Winnipeg last year at this time and hockey was EVERYWHERE, When I came back to Key West, my home for the last 24 years, I couldn’t beg anyone to watch hockey with me.

No one here, in the southermost city (tiny island) in the USA, can even imagine what happened that afternoon in 1972, when Paul Henderson scored that goal and Canada, arguably, emerged as the world’s Hockey Champion. As Canadian, it\’s kind of a birth right, you know and that moment when Henderson scored was absolutely incredible.

I was getting my degree in Poli Sci at the University of Manitoba and I was a Montreal Canadiens fan. Classes were cancelled for the hockey summit, and I watched the entire series in the Arts lounge or the United College Lounge at the University of Manitoba.

It was SOOO passionate. I cannot believe that the Americans that I live with now had no idea of that hockey series, since it was fought and won like a war for us, only on the hockey ice. And what a war it was. Three to three, one tie, and Game 8.

The ENTIRE staff and student body of the University of Manitoba was in one lounge or another ( check through history, how many events cancelled classes like this and you’ll find very few), The game was tense. You wanted Dryden to have a shut out but that was a fantasy that died early. It was neck and neck…..Cournoyer scored…..the damned Russians scored…..Tretiak was superhuman. (I thought he might have been an astronaut who they bounced out and onto the ice because he was so incredible.)
The entire campus. Every person at the University of Manitoba gathered somewhere in front of a TV Screen for HOCKEY and PAUL HENDERSON SCORED.

We could hear that cheer….starting in Gander, through Glace Bay, up the St. Lawrence, through the great lakes out the the prairies and WE JOINED IT.